Here are a couple choice quotes from T.O.’s surprise signing with the Buffalo Bills. They both demonstrate how little sense this man and this situation make.

First, I’m sitting in the laundromat when my friend Nate calls. He’s a die-hard Bills fan. That “die-hard” cliche really applies in this case. His first, earnest words: “I need therapy.” That’s never a good sign after your team signs a Pro Bowl receiver.

Second, T.O. himself says in the ESPN.com story, “I looked at the defensive side of ball and offensive side of the ball, and these guys have all the pieces.”

Um, T.O? Ever heard of Trent Edwards? That’s what I thought – he’s your quarterback. Your new team finished out the season with a ripe shutout at home against the Patriots. Ever heard of Dick Jauron? He’s your coach. Enough said.

Or Deadspin, or wherever fake news is made.

An article on a NASCAR injury somehow pales next to Ben Roethlisberger playing the Super Bowl with broken ribs or next to A-Rod’s steroid admission or next to anything else involved in a real sport.

Even boxing seems real compared to a NASCAR driver’s busted pinkie finger taking up space and money on ESPN.com.

For evidence that boxing actually can be cool, watch this video:

Here’s the tension:

A. Instant replay ensures that football, a game of inches, gets called correctly down to the inch. It creates an absolutely fair playing field.

B. Instant replay slows down the game and features some odd technicalities so that sometimes extremely important, apparently reviewable calls cannot get reviewed. It makes referees a central part of the game.

Talk to me before the Super Bowl, and I’m pretty strong on the A side. Now I’m not so sure. You’re telling me you can’t review the 15-yard late hit on Ben Roethlisberger that continued a Steelers drive in the third quarter (this was one of three personal fouls against the Cardinals that drive), just because it’s a “judgment” call? Take a look at that on replay and there is your incontrovertible evidence to overturn the call.

I don’t think we can get rid of instant replay. We should all blame replay, though, for increasingly intrusive referees (and some terrible personal foul calls) and belligerently bored sportscasters.

Published Jan. 21 (with an accompanying video).

It is fascinating to trace the tenuous (potential) line from Henderson to Michael Irvin to Terrell Owens. Maybe we only read this article on Hollywood Henderson because of the Cowboys’ recent failures. But then Henderson reminds us that he’s a badboy of a different sort.

He got sober. He didn’t change his ego, but he milked it to get sober.

Henderson also reached the Super Bowl three times. Owens hasn’t done it with the Cowboys. Neither has Tony Romo. The media creates much of the Cowboys’ mystique, of course, through the increased lens, but Jerry Jones creates it as well.

Largely because I had previously read very little about Hollywood Henderson, the article proved worthwhile, even though it doesn’t offer too much insight into Henderson’s current character beyond the giantesse of his ego.

Most comments about the new ESPN.com design, which was about a year in the making, likely focus on the increased video/audio components, or at least their bump in publicity.

However, my favorite aspect of the new site is the “Editor’s Choice” feature. Today it asks whether yesterday’s hit on Willis McGahee was merely legal violence, or against the rules. Maybe I respect the feature simply because it says “Editor” above, or maybe it’s a worthy replacement of the endless “SportsNation” promotions, which don’t provoke much insight. For example, today’s SportsNation question: “Which team is more likely to return to the playoffs next year? The Eagles or the Ravens?”

Um, after this NFL season, we have no idea. We can speculate endlessly about Donovan McNabb’s health or Joe Flacco’s maturation, and we will, but it ultimately comes down to offseason moves, health, and a host of other decisions or strokes of luck. Meanwhile, the editor’s choice feature asks a significant judgment question with actual implications.

Congratulations to the Arizona Cardinals on their Super Bowl appearance. As a Seattle Seahawks fan, I know how exciting a team’s first appearance in a Super Bowl can be.

Of course, Arizona in January is much different than Seattle in January, or Detroit in January (where Super Bowl XL was played). It’s like summer. How do those people understand the changing of seasons?

In the playoffs, they haven’t had to worry about the changing of seasons. Their first game came under the roof of University of Phoenix stadium, their second in Carolina, their third again at home, and the fourth will be the Super Bowl in Florida.

Maybe if this team were 15-1 and from a warm weather locale, we’d understand. But the Cardinals went 9-7 in the regular season, feasting off six wins from their lowly NFC West counterparts. They lost 48-20 in chilly Philadelphia to the Eagles, the same team they beat in Sunday’s NFC Championship Game. We could count a 30-24 Week 6 overtime win against a Dallas team that at that point we esteemed far more than the Cardinals. Otherwise they beat Miami in Arizona during the pre-Wildcat era and took down the Bills at home.

Nothing to make anyone believe they could win one playoff game, let alone one against the Carolina Panthers, who were 8-0 at home and the league’s hottest team. Of course, Jake Delhomme entered the picture (again, Seahawks fans should remember Delhomme’s stinker in the 2006 NFC Championship game), and the Panthers neglected their running game.

In this crazy NFL season, the one question we can’t answer is “why?” Why have the Cardinals won three straight games? Why did they win one game? Why does this Super Bowl appearance bear some echoes of Super Bowl XL, which pitted the Seahawks against these same Steelers?

My early pick: the Cardinals. They won’t fall prey to Bill Levy’s questionable calls, Kurt Warner and his receivers can certainly pick up the Steelers’ blitz, and Pittzburgh doesn’t have enough of an defense to take over the game.

Bill Simmons might have been exaggerating when he wrote in his column Friday that it was inexcusable for the Carolina Panthers to not triple-team a player like Fitzgerald.

How wise Simmons looks now. Fitzgerald just racked up his third touchdown catch of the first half. He faced single coverage in each of the last two – one, on a deep quasi-flea flicker and another at the goal line. Each decision is indefensible.

I wonder if Eagles defense coordinator Jim Johnson’s presence in the upstairs booth, rather than the sideline, has a certain effect on the intensity of the Philadelphia defense. Intensity, though, has nothing to do with the awful choice to leave Fitzgerald in single coverage (it just happened again as the Cardinals drive down the field with a minute remaining in the half).

As a professional journalist, ESPN’s Ed Werder knows that anonymous sources do not have much legitimacy. Why? They do not have the boldness to speak out with their name, and accordingly their account of events may not be true. They’re protected from absolute accountability by their anonymity.

Anyway, Werder wrote another article about the Dallas Cowboys’ locker room dynamics. I wrote at the end of the NFL regular season about his first foray into the topic.

This new article from Werder is predicated on tips from anonymous sources about planned discussions about Terrell Owens. But the headline reads “Sources: Cowboys may release Owens.” In other words, “Ed Werder: Hears Speculation and Decides it Will Make Front Page of ESPN.com.” Maybe I’m exaggerating, and maybe the Cowboys will release Owens. Werder bases his argument off the “beliefs” of two sources with the Cowboys about opinions of executives within the Cowboys organization.

The article ends up being a lot more about Jason Garrett than about Terrell Owens, because there’s more of a story there. Misleading headline for an article based on speculation. Not a great recipe for quality journalism.

Excellent reporting in an ESPN article.

I wrote this column for the school newspaper in mid-September, just as the NFL season got underway.

Let’s revisit my major predictions:

1. Aaron Rodgers will lead the Packers to the NFC North title. Um, not so much. Surprisingly, I did not predict that the streaky, and ultimately shaky, tandem of Tarvaris Jackson and (the aging) Gus Frerotte would lead the Vikings to the NFC North title. Rodgers posted great statistics, but ultimately faltered down the stretch of several games. With a more consistent running game, this prediction could’ve come true.

2. Matt Cassel won’t be able to save the Patriots season. Who knows what I meant by the ambiguous word “save”? Technically, I was correct. Cassel and the 11-5 Patriots didn’t make the playoffs, but Cassel certainly earned himself a starting spot somewhere for next season, once the Patriots execute a sign-and-trade. In my ensuing discussion of the AFC East, I completely ignored their only playoff team, the Miami Dolphins. So yeah, I didn’t anticipate a 1-15 team going 11-5 with a college-level offense.

3. The St. Louis Rams will challenge Miami’s epic run at 0-16. Soooo close. Right record to fall, wrong team to do it. If only I had paid attention to one or two Rod Marinelli press conferences before I wrote this prediction.

4. The NFC East will remain the most difficult division in football. This is also technically true, if we’re looking for the most difficult division to play in without committing a crime or getting sucked into the locker room drama. Maybe not the most compelling division in the league (AFC East and NFC South get nods), but certainly better than either West division.

5. A couple of notes on the Seahawks, including one about them making the playoffs with an 8-8 record. Wishful thinking. I also didn’t expect Larry Fitzgerald to become the greatest receiver in NFL history over just two playoff games. Congratulations to the Cardinals for finally “vindicating” the pundits who choose them year-after-year, thanks to a 9-7 record in a weak division and two warm-weather playoff victories against teams with no offensive output.

6. The media will continue to reinforce the stereotype of the great white quarterback. You might not think this is true, but look at how much more attention Joe Flacco and Matt Ryan get in the mainstream press, merely because they manage to overshadow their middling statistics with one or two clutch plays per game, than the true keys to their teams, like the Ravens’ less-friendly Ray Lewis or near-MVP Falcons running back Michael Turner. It’s easier to look at a quarterback as the savior.

7. Finally, the Steelers will beat the Cowboys 31-18 in the Super Bowl. I wanted to revisit my NFL predictions now, before the season actually ends, to announce beforehand that I originally typed in the Eagles instead of the Cowboys, but decided Dallas was a safer pick. For some reason, I chose Tony Romo over an excessively motivated Donovan McNabb. One more thing: if the Steelers and the Eagles make the Super Bowl, can we play the game at a muddy high-school field in the middle of Pennsylvania? These teams don’t belong in a warm-weather game. Bring on the rain, the mud, and the greatness.